


the rocks were blue

by mattysones



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Retelling, colorblind keith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-16 00:36:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16074698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattysones/pseuds/mattysones
Summary: The world had never been dull with his dad there. Without him everything turned into blurry, grey, nothingness.





	the rocks were blue

The Galaxy Garrison was surrounded by rocks that were mostly red with stripes, but in spots there were rocks with grey, blue and green tints. Blue agate, one of Keith's professors said, not terribly uncommon and glowed prettily in the right sunlight.

Blue rocks were even less significant than that Keith had never seen the color blue in his life. He had achromatopsia, seeing the world in shades of grey. Dad had noticed when Keith couldn't follow color-based directions. It had never hindered him otherwise.

He might have seen red, once; the color of the stripes on Dad's jacket before it turned into ash, when the station's Chaplain told him the news.

_Terribly sorry ... do you have any immediate relatives ... we all loved him..._

He had never seen colors the way others did, but the world had never been dull with his dad there. Without him everything turned into blurry, grey, nothingness. He never stopped mourning. Never would. 

To say he stole Shiro's car because he was mourning was too kind; Keith stole Shiro's car because he was angry.

Angry at a teacher who assumed he was a lost cause. At his classmates who had families to return to and didn't understand why Keith would be upset when they talked about home. Angry at this man who had the universe at his fingertips and talked about flying and discovery and stars.

He didn't really care about Takashi Shirogane at the time, even if he knew exactly who he was. Keith's interests lay in flight semantics, the incredible feats machines could perform, not the people behind them. _The Calypso_ , a daughter of Atlas, named because the crew would be gone for a total of seven years. Not Keith's favorite, but Shiro thought she was beautiful.

Shiro held his hand to lead him toward something great and Keith's vision changed, shifted. In retrospect, Keith thought the world wasn't brighter but, greys took different hues that he couldn't articulate. That gentle shift in Keith's world appeared when Shiro talked about the math behind falling and Keith thought _maybe I can be happy._

The Kerberos Mission was news that made history books. Decades later anyone could tell you where they were when they heard about what would be the start of an apocalypse.

Teachers had the news on in every classroom, screens flickering with satellite pictures of drifting silver shrapnel, evidence that something had gone terribly wrong; pilot error. The biggest scientific leap in decades reduced to scrap metal.

When the space flight teachers and students began processing what happened, an announcement came over the speakers:

"Katie Holt, report to the Commanders' office."

While Katie Holt gathered her things, wide-eyed and hyperventilating, Keith's world shattered a second time in seven years. No one called for him on the loudspeaker; only family members would be notified of the Kerberos Crew's deaths.

He was gone within a month; fighting might have been overlooked as a 'discipline case' issue at ten-years-old, but at seventeen he was bigger, sharper, never quite fit in, especially in a military school. The Garrison wasn't obligated to cater to Shiro's pet projects, especially when the project was aggressively asking questions about news footage. _It didn't make sense_ , there was no way Shiro's piloting had failed.

The councilors' tried to attribute his disbelief to hero-worship and shock but it was deeper than that. Shiro didn't screw up. _Everyone knows how close you were._ Maybe something failed with the equipment, but not _Shiro why were they blaming Shiro_.

Shiro piloted like every vehicle was an extension of his body. He understood fall trajectories like no one else; there was no way he would have crashed into Kerberos, he wouldn't have lost control. He was the embodiment of steady patience - _he was sick_ \- he was strong - _he had a year_ \- Keith couldn't imagine Shiro failing to find a solution and going down in fire so hot it turned purple.

_We all told him not to go, he should have listened. Those muscle spasms must have crippled him while piloting ..._

Professor Iverson wasn't angry when Keith punched him, but had to file the report that led to Keith's expulsion. Keith lied about having a cousin nearby, kept what gear might be useful on a hike and walked off-base in the opposite direction of Plaht City.

His father's house was condemned.

Only the guest house remained, a converted utility shed that Dad used as a mudroom. The tiny standing shower's tiles were cracked, a bedroom to the side with a moth eaten mattress, filled with dust and rat poop. The well was still good. Some local rescues took the animals years ago.

Keith looked at the sun peeking through ragged curtains that were never great to begin with, shining on collapsed couches which Keith remembered dragging inside. Home sweet home.

He couldn't tell you what he did the next year; the world was grey and improvements to the shed were out of boredom and survival. He snuck on base to steal a hoverbike - one of the nice ones the Garrison let Shiro and Dad check out; he disabled the GPS and hid it in nearby rock formations but no one ever came looking.

In a 7-11 at 3AM a couple of Garrison students sneaked out for hotdogs and bags of Combos, while Keith was by the refrigerators loading armfuls of canned beans. One of the boys looked over him without seeing, but Keith startled - the boy's eyes _changed_ \- the world shifted and it was _bright_. Keith felt something, a tug, an electromagnetic pull deep in his chest.

 _Too_ bright; a migraine pulsed behind his eyes. His cans dropped from his arms, clattering and rolling on the floor. The Garrison kids looked over at the noise but didn't see him kneel down to recover his excuse for groceries, fingers scrambling as he tried to rebalance. His eyes landed on the ramen he'd been searching for. Maybe he should splurge on actual meat if he was going crazy.

A cigarette lighter at the cash register glared in-color at him, distracting him while the cashier scanned his cans. Keith pointed at it, "Sorry," he said, "I'm colorblind, could you tell me what that is?"

The cashier raised their eyebrows, "Blue?"

Keith plucked it out of its case and added it to the pile, "Thanks."

 _Blue blue blue_. 

Blue, the color of the sky, jeans, brightly colored cars and fingernail paint. Blue agate, glowing in the sunset, but mostly importantly, tugging at him in his dreams. The color blue whispered at him, trying to show him something. A promise that what happened to Shiro could be explained. It was all Keith had.

That, or he was going crazy.

He must be, he thought, when the pull was particularly strong. He'd always been someone who had gone off his gut instinct and he couldn't take it anymore; his blue-tinted dreams showed him rock formations and caves with writing that glowed. Sometimes the impressions felt like words, but when he woke he couldn't remember what was said.

Keith loaded food, water and the remnants of his dad's old tracking equipment. He used the the bike that reminded him of Shiro - the Shiro who had rode off a cliff and told him he could do it too.

The color blue was going to lead him to Shiro. Keith was sure. It had promised.

* * *

He found it, he thought, in a cave several miles from his home. It was more of a feeling than anything because he couldn't find anything else in the cave; it ended about a mile inside, damp, which implied an underground river but Keith couldn't find a means underneath.

Blue mostly went silent once he found the cave. The pull was present but less, like whatever spoke to him wasn't trying as hard. He still looked and listened.

 _Coming,_ the color blue whispered to him one night. _Arrival. Promise. Fly. Fight._

 _Who?_ Keith asked.

_Coming. Fly. Fight._

_Show me._

Blue showed him an area several miles from the Garrison. The abstract ideas were jumbled and disconnected, but the literal ideas were fairly clear. Something was coming. Here's where it should be.

After a year of following vague clues that mostly panned out, Keith went with his instinct and trusted Blue. 

He'd found some old gasoline in the shed and thought about how to make explosives. Blue said he'd have to fight. For what, he didn't know.

The crash could be felt for miles. By the time he got to the location the quarantine tents were halfway up and he couldn't see what was hidden. He had to get in.

What happened was in technicolor. 

He saw Shiro and his world shifted, expanded.

There was no time for emotions, because Blue himself was walking toward him and yelling at him, no, that wasn't Blue, but there was no time because he needed to get Shiro _out_ when two colors he'd never seen before followed not-Blue.

Yellow and Green exploded in front of his eyes, _friends, friends, friends_ Blue whispered urgently and Keith had to roll with it because people with guns were coming.

Keith didn't have a lot of time to think about colors - Shiro was in his arms and _alive_ ; Shiro's appearance barely occurred to him because a missing part of Keith's life was slotted back in place. The world was after them and Keith didn't care, Shiro was with him.

Self-doubt wasn't new to Keith, but Lance finding his cork board cataloging all of his searching and dubbing it the 'Crazy Board' made him question himself. Lance had every right to be doubtful but Keith didn't appreciate being mocked; he let Hunk and Pidge handle the rest because they were headed toward the areas he'd already explored.

 _I can see._ Keith wanted to tell Shiro, who was confused and probably suffering a concussion. _I'm not colorblind and I think it's because I met you._ Keith couldn't define the burgeoning feeling that came with that realization but it was warm, and it was red.

* * *

The rocks were blue in places where Hunk and Pidge led them. The landscape was also painted with reds and oranges, shades of yellow he hadn't seen before - specks of greenish-brown plant life that withstood the weather. Blue brightened the sky, nearly white even against the low-hanging clouds that cast shadows over the canyons.

Keith hung close to Shiro and vice versa, but Shiro didn't touch his shoulder, or offer soft smiles, or fold his arms loosely when he was amused the way he used to. He was closed, face stitched shut with a scar and Keith had so many questions for him but not now, not with strangers near them.

"Here!" Hunk called from ahead, waving excitedly.

Jealousy twinged his chest that Hunk and Pidge could find in hours what had taken him months. He looked at Shiro who nodded back at him, and they all stepped forward into a cave made of blue.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as part of a 'zine application since I didn't have anything worksafe. It's an idea I've been mulling over for a while; Keith was colorblind until he could see each color upon meeting each paladin. It was supposed to cover each paladin equally, but for the application I tried to make it Sheith-focused.


End file.
